RIAA says DRM will make a comeback

I found this on BoingBoing, and just had to put my two-cents in.

I buy (keyword: buy, which means purchase, pay money to, etc.) a ton of music. That is, lots and lots. I'm a freaking music junkie, I think.

But I will never, ever "rent" music and allow some big company to tell me what, where, when, or how I listen to it. I download albums from Amazon.com MP3 downloads, and I also buy albums from Magantune.com. Neither one has DRM or prevents me from doing things with the music. Magnatune's license is quite liberal; they allow you to share your music (purchased music) with up to three of your friends--no additional cost.

It's simple. The greatest enemy of musicians is obscurity. Piracy exists and has always existed. There is the perception (on the part of the RIAA) that digital piracy materially affects record sales, but that does not factor in the following two items: 1) not every piracy of a song/album represents a lost sale, and 2) even pirated music leads to future sales.

I'm old, and I may have a different attitude about music and musicians than younger folks, but I have no problem paying a reasonable price to have good, new music. It has value to me, so it's worth something in return.

I occasionally obtain music from others. They think it may be something I am interested in. Some of the time I like it, which almost certainly leads to my purchase of music. Nightwish came to me that way. Now I own something like a dozen albums of theirs. Sometimes I don't like it, so there's no loss to the musician or record company. It wasn't something I would buy, and it's not something I will buy, either.

I don't buy as many CDs as I used to. I buy MP3 downloads much more often today, and I've come to prefer it. If I have to I will go back to buying CDs, and if those CDs won't let me digitize the music without restriction, then I won't buy those, either.

And that's that.